E is for Eggplant. Really.

Hey there. Hi. Busy spring spent producing MANOS - The Hands of Felt. Ate my brain.

And now we're back.

So, eggplant. Yeah, I have to admit, my past with regards to eggplant is not the greatest.

WARNING: DO NOT BE EATING WHILE YOU READ THIS.

In fact, the first time I encountered eggplant, I managed about three bites before I threw up on my plate. At the table, yes. (I've mentioned I have texture issues? Yeah, well, this stuff was pretty darn slimy.) I don't think my parents ever made it again.

But...I should be able to improve upon this as an adult, yes? I mean, look at The Eggplant. It's so darn pretty. There must be something I can do to it that won't set me off.

So what do I know about eggplant? Not much. I had it in my head it is related to nightshade, which Wikipedia confirms (all hail). Incidentally, this means it's also related to tomatoes, which connects some texture dots for me.

According to many (many) hours of watching Food Network, the most important thing to do to the eggplant is salt it to keep it from being bitter. So I'll be sure to pay attention to that.

And Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver has some lovely descriptions of pink stripey eggplants that sound really neat. I may venture to Whole Paycheck and see if they have something like that.

Despite jumping in pretty underinformed here, I actually already have in mind what I want to attempt: grilled, moussaka, and baba ganoush.

So we'll see how that goes. And hope for no vomiting.

C is for Cranberry (that's good enough for me)

Requested by loyal reader Patti, I'm embracing the (now-over) holiday season with cranberries, a fruit about which I know very little:

- Cranberry juice is apparently especially good for maintaining healthy lady-bits
- and is also quite tasty in a Cosmopolitan. Coincidence?
- The Cranberries (band) were a big part of the soundtrack for my late high school/early college years.
- Helping harvest cranberries seems to be a popular way to torment TV hosts.
- Many people have encountered the Canned Cranberry Gel Loaf as a part of holiday feasts. Some respond to this by hating it, others crave it. I'm one of the haters.

Now for some research:
- it's an evergreen
- native to North America
- called a "superfruit" (a marketing term that basically indicates a fruit with lots of antioxidants)
- seldom sold or eaten in its unprocessed form
- though it is harvested from flooded fields, it doesn't grow in water
- the research that indicates drinking cranberry juice can help prevent UTIs in women was in the British Medical Journal, vol 322, pp 1571-1573, (June 29) 2001, in case you're curious.

B is for Blogging. A lot. Part B

Yep. That was for reals. I joined NaBloPoMo. Why? Because I don’t have time to do NaNoWriMo.

I tried that once, when I thought I did have time. And failed. So maybe I’m looking for a little redemption here. Just a dash. Plus a heaping cup of blogging discipline.

30 blogs. 30 days. Let’s go out and get it.

B is for Bacon Bacon BACON!

Still a bit safe as far as ingredients go, but I can’t resist; I love bacon. How much do I love it? This much:

What the heck is it? Bacon is cured meat from a pig. Now, since I’m American, my bacon of choice is cut from the pig belly (“streaky bacon” to those of you located elsewhere). In other lands, they tend to go for back and side cuts; less fat, but to me it always seems a bit more like ham.

Z is for Zucchini, My Other Inspiration

I've babbled a bit about what possessed me to do this, but while I was blanching vegetables night before last I realized there was a little more to the story:

Ever since I can remember, I've both wanted to cook and wanted to garden. Kitchens being a little easier to come by than real estate, my first real go at a vegetable garden was last summer.

It was, weeell, mostly a learning year. My own fault; I jumped in without doing much research (I did read the back of the seed packets, but those are not as informative as one might hope), and the only things that did solidly well were the swiss chard and the purple string beans (hurray! for low maintenance plant relationships).

I spent the winter reading up a bit and now have an embarrassment of tasty green riches. I love zucchini, but had only really cooked it one way prior to this August: sauteed in chunks. A yummy enough preparation, but not something you want to do five days in a row. Having been forced into cohabitation with all this summer squash, I now know how to grill it, bake it, stuff it, hide it in cookies and freeze it for the winter. So I thought, "Hey! This method could work for other foods! Whee!"

So here we are. Trying to figure out one last thing to do with apples.

A is for Apple

Yeah, yeah, I know, kind of an obvious choice here. I'm feeling out the format and I promise to get weird later on, mmm'kay? Good.

What the Heck is it? It's a fruit (culinary definition here, i.e., sweet) that grows on a tree. Roundish. Matures in the autumn so it's (huzzah!) in season now.


left to right we have Gala, Elstar and MacIntosh apples. Organic, from my local Greenmarket. Closing in on them we have some "love apples," or tomatoes, from my garden. These are everywhere in my kitchen right now and if I thought I could've conned you and myself into thinking they were spelled "Atomato", we'd be playing with them right now.

Random free associating:
- The Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden tends to be represented as an apple, pretty much everywhere in pop culture, except in the Bible where it's just called a fruit.

- Golden Apples are all over mythology. My fave is the story where Paris (Orlando Bloom in Troy, if you've seen it) giving one to Aphrodite leads to the Trojan War, which I like because those are pretty massive consequences for an after-school snack. (Paris would've done better to take Athena's bribe (wisdom), but if he'd been smart enough to do that, he probably, you know, wouldn't've needed to.)

- There's an episode of the GI Joe cartoon from the 80s where the Joes kill a giant all-consuming blob with the toxin in an orchard's worth of apple seeds. I still remember it after all these years and, hey, apple seeds do, in fact, contain cyanide. Knowing is half the battle!

- I like Fiona Apple's music but not her album titles. Not good cooking music necessarily, but good for driving or working out.

Wot's all this, then?

Let's face it: Culinary school is not in the cards any time soon. Maybe not ever.

But why be down hearted? I have full access to a kitchen, several grocery chains and Mr. Interweb. Surely I can teach myself quite a bit homeschool-style. Maybe someday I can be Token Self-taught Cheftestant on a cooking reality show and get cut in the fourth or fifth round when I choke in the face of all that advanced training.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Here's the game: I'll work my way through the alphabet, picking an ingredient for each letter and playing with said ingredient for a "week". (Week being in quotes because I'm a theatrrr person, and coming up with seven days of consecutive free time is hard to do.) No other constraints. If, having made it to Zed, we're all not thoroughly sick of this, I'll start over at A with new ingredients.